Mick Foley Lists Greatest Wrestlers, Rock’s Part-time Schedule, More

Mick Foley was interviewed on The Boomer and Carton Show. Here are some highlights.

If Hulk Hogan is the greatest of all time and should be viewed as the face of the sport: “Oh man, that’s a hard question because wrestling has got that show business element and the athletic element. It’s tough in any sport [to pick a great].

If not Hogan, who would compete with him: “You have Hogan, you have your class of five greatest drawing cards of all time. I’m putting it five randomly. Hogan’s definitely there, Rock, Austin, Andre and Bruno, as my top five. I think any one of those guys could argue why they were the top drawing card of their era.”

The Rock: “The Rock can come back and make more money for the company now personally then guys could in entire years. This is what I’ll say. The Rock came back for his first match in a few years when I had my big return match in 2004. My first coming out of retirement match. It’s tough to stay away. It’s not like baseball, where if you can’t get around the fastball you know your day is up. Guys are always convincing themselves usually well past their expiration date that they’ve still got it. At that time, and this is not a knock on him, but he seemed to be playing the Rock. He’d been in Hollywood and came back and he seemed to be playing the Rock. And now when I see him he is the Rock. He’s been successful enough, phenomenally successful, in movies so that he can more firmly embrace [the Rock's character].”

If wrestling is more popular now than it’s ever been: “I think internationally it’s more popular. There was that huge wave that I was fortunate to be a part of. I wasn’t at the top where Stone Cold and Austin were, but I was right below that top so I got to ride that wave. So that was a period where you go into an elementary school classroom and 10 out of 20 kids would be wearing wrestling shirts. Obviously WWE has had to react to MMA. For people who thought Mr. McMahon was crazy or horrible for talking about wrestling being entertainment, you have to think where wrestling would be now if they had kept trying to portray it as being the real deal when the real deal is on right after it.”

The types of people that are attracted to pro wrestling: “There’s two kinds of people that are driven to pro wrestling. There’s the phenomenally competitive types, like your Brock Lesnar’s and your Kurt Angle’s; people who able to thrive in the most thankless sport of all, which is amateur wrestling. Then, I was the reaction guy. I wanted to get reactions; it was never about being the best. It was about getting the best reactions.”

If there was one wrestler who made him want to get into the business: “Definitely. Jimmy Superfly Snuka. I was in the Garden. I’m being inducted in two nights into the WWE Hall of Fame, in Madison Square Garden, 30 years after I saw the Superfly take flight.”